The bill discriminating and counting apparatus, which receives the bills of which denominations are mixed in a block by the hopper, feeds the received bills one by one to carry, discriminates the denominations and authenticity thereof and counts the same, and calculates the total amount of the received normal bills or the number of bills for each denomination and displays the same, is conventionally known.
In such a conventional bill discriminating and counting apparatus, much effort for setting and making a choice of a variety of functions before starting to use the machine is required, so that a simplified operation for setting is conventionally desired. Especially, when handling the bills of a plurality of currency systems, a setting operation thereof has been complicated. That is to say, in a case in which the bills of one country are discriminated and counted and after that the bills of another country are discriminated and counted, it has been required to turn the power off once and turn the power on again to perform setting for performing discrimination and counting of the bills of another country. As a background of processing the bills of a plurality of currency systems, in China as a representative case of a member of the Asia area, for example, it is required to process both of yuan, which is the local currency, and U.S. dollar, which is the international currency, and in Britain as a representative case of a member of the Euro area, it is required to process both of pound, which is the local currency, and euro, which is the unified currency.
As the bill discriminating and counting apparatus having a function to handle the bills of a plurality of currency systems with one machine, there is one shown in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-149086 (patent document 1), for example.
The bill discriminating and counting apparatus shown in the above-mentioned patent document 1 is provided with the nationality setting mode, and is capable of handling the bills of the specific country by turning the power on while pressing the specific key.
For example, by turning the power on while pressing the “DENOMI” key, it becomes possible to handle the bills of the United States, and by turning the power on while pressing the “CLR” key, it becomes possible to handle the bills of France. Meanwhile, although it is disclosed in the above-mentioned patent document 1 that the nationality of the bills to be handled is switched while maintaining the power on, in any event, it is not possible to shift to the bill setting of next country until the processing of the bills of one country is finished, so that it was not possible to perform setting of the bills of a plurality of countries at one time. In addition, it has been required that the counting mode is performed for every switching of nationalities, so that it remained that the setting operation is complicated.